Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Sharpeville, Nigeria

By Chuks Iloegbunam

There are two stories
to jump off from:

1) Sharpeville, South Africa;
March 21, 1960.

A group
of between 5,000 and 10,000 people converged on the local police station in the
township of Sharpeville, offering themselves up for
arrest for not carrying their passbooks. The Sharpeville police were not
completely unprepared for the demonstration, as they had already been forced to
drive smaller groups of more militant activists away the previous night.

By
10:00, a large crowd had gathered, and the atmosphere was initially peaceful
and festive. Fewer than 20 police officers were present in the station at the
start of the protest. Later the crowd grew to about 20,000, and the mood was
described as “ugly”, prompting about 130 police reinforcements, supported by four
Saracen armoured personnel carriers. The police were armed with firearms,
including Sten submachine guns and Lee-Enfield rifles. There was no evidence
that anyone in the gathering was armed with anything other than rocks.

F-86
Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers approached to within a hundred feet of the
ground, flying low over the crowd in an attempt to scatter it. The protestors
responded by hurling a few stones and menacing the police barricades. Tear gas
proved ineffectual, and policemen elected to repel these advances with their
batons. At about 13:00 the police tried to arrest a protestor, resulting in a
scuffle, and the crowd surged forward. The shooting began shortly thereafter.
The official figure is that 69 people were killed, including 8 women and 10
children, and 180 injured, including 31 women and 19 children. Many were shot
in the back as they turned to flee.” (Quoted from Wikipedia.)

*Herbert Ekwe-ekwe

2)Onitsha; Aba,
Nigeria;
December 2015 – February 2016.

“The
current orgy of massacres of Biafrans by the Nigerian occupation genocidist
military, begun on Wednesday 2 December 2015 in Onicha, has continued unabated. On
Wednesday 9 February 2016, the genocidists positioned in Aba, commercial city
in southeast Biafra, shot dead 10 Biafrans attending a prayer session at the
National High School, Aba, for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, freedom broadcaster
of Radio Biafra and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Vanguard,
Lagos, Friday 12 February 2016), illegally detained by the Nigerian regime in a
secret police facility in Abuja since mid-October. Scores of other
demonstrators were seriously wounded in the slaughter and several others seized
and taken away by the genocidists. This massacre is the second within three
weeks in Aba.
On Monday 18 January 2016, another marauding genocidist corps gunned down eight
peaceful Biafrans demonstrating for Nnamdi Kanu’s release and the restoration
of Biafran independence (Vanguard, Lagos, Tuesday 19 January 2016).”

This
writer’s perspective, to be unambiguous from the onset, is from the viewpoint
of Nigeria
as one corporate entity. That point made, there are a few known facts that
require restating nonetheless. First, in the apartheid South Africa, it was white
supremacists gunning down Blacks they generally considered to be less than
human. In 2016 Nigeria,
it is the bullets from the country’s military and Police felling the citizens.

Secondly,
reactions to the two developments mentioned above vary starkly. Black South
Africans were so outraged by Sharpeville that “the following week saw demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and
riots around the country. On 30 March 1960, the government declared a state of
emergency, detaining more than 18,000 people, including prominent
anti-apartheid activists… A storm of international protest followed the
Sharpeville shootings, including sympathetic demonstrations in many countries
and condemnation by the United Nations. Sharpeville marked a turning point in South Africa’s
history; the country found itself increasingly isolated in the international
community. The event also played a role in South
Africa’s departure from the Commonwealth
of Nations.”

*Pro-Biafra protester killed by Nigerian security officers in Onitsha

In the
recent Nigerian massacres, whether of Biafran agitators or of Shia’a adherents
in Zaria, the
response has remained a deafening silence. It raises critical questions: Is the
United Nations moving forward or going backwards? Are Nigerians pretending not
to notice because when the coffin of another’s child is being taken to the
cemetery, it looks like what is being conveyed is a log?

I have
continued to examine these questions. My changeless attitude is that the
shooting of non-violent demonstrators would sooner exacerbate than solve
identified problems. Does Nigeria
realize that those commanded, as a matter of course, to shoot to kill and maim
unarmed Biafran agitators today are being compelled to inculcate a habit almost
impossible to shake off even after there are no more Biafran agitators to shoot
dead or cripple?

I sat
down and carefully thought through this dispensation’s grotesqueries. I invite
my fellow countrymen and women to also sit down and critically analyze them. I
am far from convinced that trigger-happiness is a rationale way of tackling the
challenges of democratic experiment. It will be fantastic to listen to, or read
up, a disquisition in contradistinction to this postulation.

*President Buhari

This
was Head of State Yakubu Gowon in October 1966, at the height of the anti-Igbo
pogrom that ultimately consumed 50,000 innocent lives: “I receive complaints daily that up till now Easterners living in the
North are being killed and molested, and their property looted. I am very
unhappy about this. We should put a stop to it. It appears it is going beyond
reason and is now at a point of recklessness and irresponsibility.”

It
appears the fingers that ought to pelt the anti-massacre drums prefer to dawdle
until the recklessness of an Odi or a Zaki Biam or a Shia’a Zaria is inflicted
on the Igbo country, all in the name of stemming the tide of Biafran agitation.
As someone who knew Chinua Achebe, I aver that were he alive today, he would
long have fired this injunction in the general direction of Abuja: “Stop
massacring my people!” I know that Ndigbo
abound everywhere who have attained international distinction in various walks
of life. What remains incomprehensible is why the thought of dissuading those
romancing the guilt of bloodshed has yet to occur to them. How could people who
felt abominated because Olisa Metuh, a politician, arrived for court hearings
in handcuffs fasten their lips in the face of the repeated massacres of their
kith and kin?

When
the previous administration escalated the fight against Boko Haram, a certain
presidential aspirant charged that it amounted to a declaration of war against
the North. When Chief Olu Falae was recently kidnapped, allegedly by Fulani
herdsmen, the Yoruba threatened secession. Yet Ndigbo are routinely being shot and killed and maimed in the name
of Rules of Engagement, and there apparently are no prominent Igbo voices at
home and in the Diaspora outraged enough to execrate the sanguinary Rules?

One
more time, Professor Ekwe-Ekwe: “Every
Biafran murdered or wounded or “disappeared” in this trail of murders by the
genocidists is meticulously documented and archived. Each genocidist unit
involved in these murders, including command and control personnel, is
meticulously documented and archived. Everyone must now know that no one or
institution involved in these murders will escape justice in court for
committing the crime of genocide. This crime, it couldn’t be overstressed, has
no statute of limitations in international law.”

**Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam,
an eminent essayist, journalist and author of several books, writes column on
the back page ofThe
Authoritynewspaper every Tuesday.